Through Fire
by Aini NuFire
Summary: 5x10 "Abandon All Hope" AU tag — Castiel didn't escape the ring of holy fire unscathed.


**A/N: For Shandrial, who requested an angsty tag to 5x10 "Abandon All Hope" with hurt!Cas and guilty!Dean. I hope you like it!**

 **Disclaimer: Not mine. Thank you to 29Pieces for beta reading! Also, she and I are planning to post the first chapter of our S12 AU collab fic next Wednesday, June 7th. Stay tuned!**

* * *

"Through Fire"

Castiel staggered out of the basement, Meg's bloodcurdling screams echoing behind him. He'd expected that to draw attention, but no other demons came running. The reapers that had gathered before were gone as well. And Lucifer…Castiel had no idea where the Devil had gone.

He stumbled outside, the chill night air searing his lungs and the burns along his wings and back. Throwing Meg across the ring of holy fire had provided an opening of escape, but the flames had licked viciously at his heels upon his exit, trying to devour him regardless. Singed fabric rubbed harshly against raw flesh with every step he took, and his wings twitched with micro spasms that sent agony rippling through his muscles. Yet he forced himself to keep going.

His vision was spotty as he swept his gaze over the town, searching for his charges. A faint, fulvous glow emanated from the ruins of one building, like the fires of Hell simmering within. Castiel took a step toward it, only to freeze when he spotted a reaper emerging from the smoldering wreckage, leading the souls of Ellen and Jo out by clasped hands.

Castiel felt his heart clench with grief. _No_ …

They vanished in the next instant, probably to Heaven, and Castiel remained fixed in place, watching with bated breath. But no other reaper appeared with the souls of Sam and Dean. They must have all been separated. But then where were the Winchesters now?

The earth rumbled, a deep, guttural groan of something long buried stirring to life. Castiel turned his gaze toward the east. Something was happening. Something big.

Sucking in a pained breath, Castiel spread his wings. His muscles twinged under the strain, yet he managed to leap the short distance to the outskirts of town. The cool currents of the ether were like ice scoring fresh claw marks down his charred wings, and Castiel bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from making a sound. Copper splashed in his mouth and down his throat, sloshing his already precarious stomach even worse.

And then his pulse gave a stutter of relief and horror, because he spotted Sam and Dean, alive, huddled on the ground at the edge of the tree line. But only a few yards away was Lucifer, standing at the head of a clearing whose earth was churning and sifting as though something were worming its way up. Behind the Devil were dozens and dozens of bodies. Castiel felt a thrill of foreboding at why the reapers had been here—and at what Lucifer intended.

Castiel's back muscles were on the verge of seizing, but he braced himself for another short jump. He landed next to the Winchesters and placed a finger to his lips to signal the importance of stealth. If Lucifer caught him now, Castiel would not be able to fly fast enough to escape.

Fortunately, Sam and Dean looked too petrified to make a sound, and Castiel reached forward to grip both brothers tightly. He was struck by a brief recollection of Hell, when he had raised Dean from Perdition. This final flight would be just as difficult.

Castiel took a deep breath, and leaped, aiming for Bobby's house. Flying was excruciating, and his left wing buckled in on itself just as they came in for a landing, which made Castiel end up more or less throwing the Winchesters forward onto the floor. The impact jolted up his spine, but he managed to catch his balance before pitching forward on top of them. His back felt as though it was on fire, and Castiel gritted his teeth against the urge to panic; he knew he had escaped the flames.

"What in the hell…" Bobby uttered. He was sitting behind his desk and gaping at them.

Sam and Dean slowly got to their feet, but then Dean was spinning around, and he shoved Castiel, hard. Castiel's balance was so unsteady that he stumbled back a step from the force.

"Where the hell were you?" Dean shouted.

He blinked in stupefaction. "…Lucifer trapped me in a ring of holy fire."

Dean's eyes were flinty and furious. "That's what you get for going off by yourself! What the hell were you thinking? We needed you! Ellen and Jo are dead!"

Castiel's chest constricted. So they knew.

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered, unbalanced by the rage radiating off of Dean. He hadn't meant to get captured, and he'd thought it important to investigate what had drawn so many reapers to the town. But he'd inadvertently let the Winchesters down when they'd most needed him. And Ellen and Jo had paid the price. Not to mention that Lucifer was still out there, and had managed to raise Death, the final Horseman.

"Oh, you're sorry?" Dean snarled.

"Dean," Sam interjected, tone much more tempered.

" _What_ , Sam? The Colt didn't even work on Lucifer! This whole thing was one big shit storm from the start."

"What do you mean it didn't work?" Bobby spoke up.

Dean whirled toward him. "I shot him point blank between the eyes, and he popped back up like a friggin' daisy!"

Sam gave the older hunter a pained grimace. "Turns out there's five things in the world the Colt can't kill, and guess who's one of them?"

Castiel closed his eyes. Of course. He'd known from the start that this venture was a long-shot, that it was suicide. But they'd had to try anyway. He'd just…hoped it wouldn't be as a colossal failure as he'd predicted.

"Balls," Bobby muttered.

"Take me back to Carthage," Dean suddenly demanded.

Castiel snapped his eyes open to find the older Winchester glaring at him again. What? Surely he couldn't be serious…

" _Dean_ ," Sam sputtered, obviously dismayed by the request as well.

"I'm not leaving my Baby there," Dean retorted.

His… Castiel supposed he should have known Dean would be angry about leaving the car behind, but it would have been too risky to attempt making their escape from the area in something that couldn't travel faster than an archangel.

"Don't be stupid, boy," Bobby snapped. "Death just got unearthed there. Let things calm down a bit first."

Dean scowled. "It's not like they have any reason to stick around." He spun back toward Castiel. "So come on, let's go."

Castiel just stared at him blankly through vision that was spotty. There was no way he could manage a return flight with the current state of his wings. In fact, Castiel wasn't sure how much longer he could manage to remain upright. The pain was making him severely nauseated, and he suddenly wanted to sit down.

Dean grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and shoved him again. " _Now_ , Cas!"

The world tilted, and Castiel's heart lurched as the ground seemed to have dropped out from beneath him. He was falling. Instinctively, he tried to spread his wings to catch himself, but a whiplash of fire forked through them, and then he mercifully fell into nothingness.

* * *

Dean was stunned stupid when Cas abruptly collapsed into a boneless heap in his arms, and since his hands were still fisted in the angel's coat, Dean was dragged down to the floor with him. What the…

"Cas!" Sam exclaimed, hurrying over to drop down beside them. He reached for Cas's shoulders to ease him back and off of Dean, but then froze, eyes blowing wide. "What the…" Sam started, echoing Dean's mental stutter.

He scooted around behind Cas and stared in horror. Dean's heart rate spiked, and he leaned forward to look over Cas's shoulder. The back of the trench coat was charred down Cas's back and parts of the sleeves.

Dean sucked in a sharp breath. What the hell?

"Well, what is it?" Bobby demanded, unable to get around them in his wheelchair to look for himself.

"Cas is hurt," Sam replied. He started tugging at the collar of the trench coat to get it off, and Dean held Cas upright as Sam yanked the fabric down. "Shit," he breathed. "These are burns."

Dean's stomach clenched. Why the hell hadn't Cas mentioned that he was hurt?

Sam peeled the suit jacket off next, then grimaced. "Um, Bobby, you got scissors?"

There was the sound of a desk drawer opening and then slamming shut, and then Bobby wheeled over close enough to pass the scissors to Dean, who then handed them to Sam. Cas remained out cold, slumped against Dean's chest.

Sam's nose scrunched up as he cut away the dress shirt, and a second later Dean could smell singed flesh—how had he failed to notice before now?—and bile rose in the back of his throat.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

Sam's brows furrowed as he looked over Cas's back. "Not that bad, actually. I mean, there's some third-degree burns, for sure. Mostly around his shoulder blades. Some lesser burns on the back of his arms."

"Shouldn't he be able to heal that?" Bobby asked.

A muscle in Sam's jaw jerked. "He said he was trapped in a ring of holy fire…that stuff can kill angels."

Dean's throat tightened. Cas had obviously found a way to escape—just apparently not unscathed. And then he'd snatched them both out from under Lucifer's nose and flown them here. Because even if he was hurt, he'd want to make sure Dean and Sam were somewhere safe.

And what had Dean done? Immediately started reaming Cas out for getting captured. And the angel had stood there and taken it, despite probably being in terrible pain and on the verge of collapse.

"Sam," Dean finally managed to say, "help me get him to the couch."

They couldn't touch his back, though, or his upper arms, and so they ended up having to just grab Cas's hands and essentially drag him forward across the floor to the couch where they carefully hefted him up and gently laid him face down. Dean ran a hand down his hair as he got a look at the burns. Sam was right; they weren't as bad as they could have been. The trench coat had taken the brunt of the fire damage. Dean frowned. So why was Cas out like this? Just from the strain of flying while injured? Or were burns from holy fire worse than normal flames?

Dean's gut twisted with further guilt. "I'll get the first aid supplies," he said, quickly turning away from the sight of Cas wounded like that. Cas wasn't supposed to be so injured. He wasn't supposed to be vulnerable like Ellen and Jo were…because Dean couldn't lose him too.

He gave himself a sharp shake as he gathered up the gauze and salves. Cas wasn't dying. They were gonna patch up these minor wounds, and Cas's healing mojo would kick in later, and he'd be fine. That's why he was out like a light, to recharge his batteries.

Yet as Dean fell back on years of training to get him through tending the gruesome wounds, he couldn't help but hear his last words to Cas ringing in his ears like the condemnation of a death knell.

* * *

Sam sat in a chair next to the couch, watching the fire in the hearth crackle lowly. Now that they were past the urgency of cleaning and bandaging Cas's wounds, the weight of grief was settling over Sam. They hadn't been able to give Ellen and Jo a proper hunter's funeral, had just burned the picture they'd all taken the night before as a proxy. After that, both Dean and Bobby had retreated to different areas with their own respective bottles of alcohol.

Sam turned his attention to the unconscious angel on the couch. They'd covered Cas's back in gauze, and the backs of his arms, which they'd laid out by his sides to keep pressure off them. His cheek was mashed against the cushion because a pillow would have given him a crick in the neck at the awkward angle he was lying at.

It was strange and rather unnerving to see Cas wounded like this. Sure, Sam had seen Cas get beaten up a bit, seen him bleed in a way that seemed a minor inconvenience, but overall Sam had always thought the angel impervious to real, serious harm…or that it would take a _lot_ to hurt him significantly.

Which left Sam with a pit of dread curdling in his stomach from Cas collapsing like he had, because while the burns looked bad in some places, and definitely painful, they weren't crippling. Certainly not for someone with Cas's stamina. It worried Sam.

It was probably worrying Dean, on top of everything else. And Sam knew his brother was probably beating himself up for how abrasive he'd been with Cas when they'd first gotten back from Carthage. None of them had noticed Cas was hurt, though, so it wasn't actually Dean's fault.

A low moan issued from the couch, and Sam straightened sharply. "Cas?"

Cas's eyelids fluttered for a moment before slowly opening. His pupils were dilated and clouded with pain. "Mhmph, what…" He tried to lift his head and shift his arms up to prop himself upright, but his left was pinned against the back of the couch.

"Easy, easy," Sam urged, lightly touching Cas's right wrist in the hopes of getting him to stay still. "Don't move yet."

Cas blinked at him dazedly. "Why…?" He craned his neck back to look over his shoulder in confusion.

"We cleaned and bandaged the burns," Sam quickly explained.

Cas's brow creased. "Oh." He dropped his cheek back against the cushion and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Are you in pain?" Sam asked worriedly. They hadn't administered anything, having no idea what kind of dose an angel would even need.

Cas didn't answer, but seemed to be focusing on breathing forcefully through his nose, so Sam was going to take that as a 'yes.'

He sucked on the inside of his cheek. "Um, you said you were trapped in a ring of holy fire. Is that what these are from?"

Cas grunted something that sounded like an affirmative.

"I thought angels couldn't pass through that without being killed."

Cas pried his eyes open again. "I managed to throw something across the ring, make a small opening." He bit back a pained groan. "A very small opening."

Sam winced in sympathy. "Is the fact that it was holy fire the reason you're hurt so bad? Because, I mean, I know these burns have gotta hurt like a bitch, but most of them aren't quite third-degree…"

Cas shook his head, mussing his hair. "My vessel…didn't take the worst of it," he rasped.

Sam quirked his brow in confusion. "What does that mean?" The worst of it…what else was there?

Cas moaned and buried his face against the cushion. "My wings," he gritted out.

Sam's eyebrows shot upward. "Wait, you're saying your wings got burned too?"

"It was holy fire," Cas replied, as though it were obvious.

But Sam didn't know how to process that…he knew angels had wings, but he'd never seen them. Dean had said the one time he'd seen Cas's in that barn, they'd been more like shadowy phantoms.

 _Shit_.

"Um, okay. Then, uh, what do we need to do?"

Cas lolled his head to look at him. "Nothing."

Sam huffed in consternation. "We can't do nothing, Cas. Burns are bad and can get infected if not treated. And since it was holy fire, am I right in assuming you can't just heal them? Especially since you're cut off?"

Cas's gaze became hooded.

Sam snorted. "Right."

Cas let out a heavy sigh, only to wince. "No angel would help tend these injuries. I have a price on my head."

Sam swallowed. "Well, what about us? Can you…I don't know, make your wings visible?"

Cas stared at him blankly, and Sam suddenly felt as though he'd asked an utterly idiotic question. A slight furrow appeared in the middle of Cas's forehead. "That- that's not…"

"What?" Sam prodded. "Not possible?"

Cas's expression pinched. "No, it is, but…it's highly unorthodox."

Sam had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. "We're kind of all you've got here," he pointed out.

Cas's mouth pressed into a thin line, maybe of displeasure, maybe pain. Maybe both. But then he closed his eyes in apparent defeat. "You- you'll have to move," he said softly.

Sam stood and hastily pulled the chair back. Cas drew his arms forward to prop himself up on them, and bowed his head, pressing his forehead against the armrest in what looked like intense concentration. The air flickered, translucent silhouettes fanning down to spill across the floor, and arching up against the back of the couch. Sam's breath caught as the contours solidified into massive dark wingspans. These were not phantoms, but full-blown, actual _wings_. With feathers.

Cas's feathers were jet-black with iridescent streaks of indigo and jade that shimmered at different hues as the appendages twitched. They were…breathtaking. But then Sam was jolted out of his mesmerized awe by a large gap in the lush plumage. Not only was a chunk of feathers missing, but the ones around the area were withered and scorched, and angry red patches of raw flesh stood out starkly up and down the muscular limbs.

Sam fought against his gorge rising. Both of Cas's wings were in similar states. "Jeez, Cas. You _flew_ with those?"

"Are they- they're bad, aren't they?" Cas responded, and though he sounded like he was trying to be stoic, Sam detected a tenor of tremulousness in his voice. His shoulders were shaking, and his fists were clenched tightly, though he kept his head bowed and didn't look.

Sam honestly didn't know what to say; he knew absolutely nothing about angel wings—or any wings, for that matter—and what kind of damage they could take.

"No," he said hurriedly. "I mean, they're burned. But, uh, we'll flush the wounds out, get them clean and wrapped, and that will help. Okay?"

Cas nodded jerkily. "If you must."

Oh yeah, 'they must.' Because there was no way they could leave Cas to languish in misery with these types of injuries.

"Okay. I'm gonna get more supplies, and Dean," Sam said, because this was a rather big job that would go better with two. Hopefully Dean wouldn't freak out about the wings. Or Bobby, who was currently passed out at the kitchen table.

"I don't want to bother Dean," Cas said quickly. "He's upset, and grieving. In fact, you both are. I appreciate what you've done already, but I can manage…" He squeezed his eyes closed and took a ragged breath.

Sam just gaped at him incredulously. "You think we'd just leave you _hurt_ and suffering like this?"

"I let you down," Cas gritted out. "If I hadn't left Ellen and Jo, they might still—"

"Don't," Sam interrupted harshly. "Their deaths aren't on you, Cas. A hellhound got Jo, and you wouldn't have been able to heal that. And Ellen sacrificed herself to—" his voice cracked, "—to give me and Dean a chance. You didn't let us down. The whole thing was a long-shot from the start. And you got me and Dean out of there; if it weren't for you, I'd be with Lucifer right now and Dean would probably be dead. _And_ ," he continued earnestly when Cas looked ready to argue. "You flew us all the way back here on wings that probably shouldn't even be functional."

Sam now understood why the landing had been a bit rough. He suddenly wondered whether Cas had intended to tell them about his injuries at all, regardless if Dean had ripped into him the way he had. Given how quickly Cas had adopted the Winchesters' propensity for using the word 'Fine,' Sam was guessing not.

"I'll be right back," he said, giving the angel a warning look not to even _think_ of moving off that couch. Fortunately, while a lot of human vernacular went over Cas's head, he seemed to get the unspoken command, because he ducked his gaze somewhat sheepishly.

Sam turned and headed for the back door, hoping his guilt-ridden brother wasn't too drunk to help him perform triage on _angel_ wings.

* * *

Dean sat on the porch steps, bottleneck dangling loosely between his fingers. He'd come out here with the intention of drowning his tempestuous emotions in whiskey, but by the time he'd sat down, his body was too numb to care to even lift the bottle. And why should he dull the pain when it served him right to bear it? He'd led Ellen and Jo to their deaths, brought them on this suicidal mission when he should have known better. The Apocalypse was his and Sam's mess; the two of them should be cleaning it up.

Only they hadn't. They'd failed, again. And someone else had paid the price. Again.

And Cas…he'd just been trying to help. Yeah, going off alone hadn't been smart, but the dude was an angel and used to taking on pretty much anything. Dean was used to him taking on pretty much anything, too.

God, Lucifer could have killed Cas, rather than simply trapping him. And the fact that Cas had escaped, and snatched the Winchesters right out from underneath the Devil's nose had probably pissed Lucifer off royally. They'd have to be even more careful in the future, then.

The screen door creaked open behind him, followed by Sam's footsteps across the wood. His brother came around to the side to loom over him, brow pinched as he roved an appraising gaze up and down.

"How drunk are you?" Sam asked.

Dean canted a dark glower up at his brother. "You really wanna bitch to me about that? Right now?" The surge of anger made him lift the bottle and actually knock back a swig. "I'll get as drunk as I damn well please."

"Dammit, Dean, I need your help. Cas is hurt worse than we thought."

That was like a splash of ice cold sobriety over his head, and Dean surged to his feet. "What the hell are you talking about?" There hadn't been any other injuries aside from the burns.

A muscle in Sam's jaw ticked. "His wings got burned pretty bad."

Dean stared at him blankly. "What?" Cas didn't have wings…or, well, he _did_ , but not, like, real wings, with feathers…

Sam let out a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. "You're not sober enough for this." He cursed under his breath.

"I'm plenty sober," Dean countered, and slammed his mostly full whiskey bottle on the porch bannister as evidence. "Now what the hell are you talking about Cas's wings?"

Sam eyed the bottle in mild surprise. "The holy fire burned his wings too. We just didn't know because he was unconscious. I convinced him to bring them over from the ethereal plane or whatever, and…they're not in good shape. And I can't patch it all up by myself."

Dean pushed past his brother before Sam had even finished his last sentence, and stormed back into the house. Bobby was passed out at the kitchen table, and Dean swept into the den, only to pull up short and gape stupidly at the massive black appendages currently sprouting from Cas's back. One was propped up against the back of the couch, while the other spilled out over the floor like a curtain of onyx silk.

Dean threw a flabbergasted look at his brother, who'd come up behind him. Sam just grimaced.

"He shouldn't have been able to fly us out of Carthage on them," Sam muttered.

Dean turned his gaze back to the mind-boggling wings, this time blinking to get past his stupefaction and focus on what was in front of him. It hadn't been easy to see at first glance, but some of the feathers were charred, as was the flesh along the arches. Dean's stomach curdled.

Son-of-a-bitch. And Dean had been demanding Cas fly him back to Carthage to get the Impala. No wonder the angel passed out.

Cas had his head slightly propped up, but bowed and pressed into the armrest. His shoulders shuddered with each shaky breath he seemed focused on taking in and letting out.

Sam nudged Dean to get past him as he brought in an armful of fresh first aid supplies from a kitchen cupboard. "Cas," he said gently. "Dean and I are going to start with flushing the burns out, okay?"

Cas didn't say anything for a long moment. Then, he rasped, "Please be quick."

"We'll try," Sam promised, and held out a bottle of saline solution to Dean.

Shit, this was gonna be harder with Cas conscious this time.

"Hey, buddy," Dean said as he came around the back of the sofa.

Cas didn't look up or acknowledge him, but granted, he looked to be in excruciating pain.

"Sam, maybe we should give him something."

His brother's mouth tightened. "Would anything work on an angel?"

"We should at least try." Dean's gut constricted at how pale Cas looked, the tendons in his hand stretched taut as he clenched his fists.

Sam didn't look very confident, but he got up and went into the kitchen, then came back with a syringe and bottle of morphine. "Twice the normal dose?"

Dean roved his gaze over the wings and how much damage there was. "How about triple? It's not like it would actually kill him," he added, only to immediately doubt himself.

Cas lifted his head then, eyes glazed with pain, but also sudden mistrust. "What are you planning to do to me?"

Dean frowned at the phrasing and obvious fear, as though he thought the Winchesters would actually intentionally hurt him. "We're not planning to hurt you, Cas; we're trying _not_ to."

"Cleaning the burns is gonna be painful," Sam said, somehow managing to sound more patient and gentle than Dean. "We want to try giving you some medicine that will hopefully dull it."

Cas continued to gaze at him skeptically for several beats, eyes slowly sliding between Sam's face and the needle. He didn't give his permission, but neither did he adamantly protest it.

After a few more awkward moments, Sam flicked an uncertain look at Dean, and then filled the syringe. Cas watched as Sam carefully straightened his arm and swabbed the inside of his elbow with an alcohol swab before inserting the needle into a vein. Sam depressed the plunger, then quickly removed the needle and set the syringe aside.

"How do you feel now?" Dean asked.

Cas looked up at him blandly. "I don't feel any different."

"Maybe we should give him more."

Sam shot him an exasperated eye roll. "Just give it a minute."

Dean fidgeted impatiently. He knew morphine wasn't instantaneous; he'd just been hoping a triple dose would be, well, close to it. And he really just wanted confirmation that it would work so that them cleaning Cas's burns weren't going to cause him more agony.

Cas stiffened. "Oh. I feel…"

"What?" Dean asked.

His eyelids fluttered. "That…mmm," he trailed off, thunking his head back down on the armrest.

Dean's brows rose. "I'll take that as it's working. Let's do this, Sam."

They quickly set to flushing out the burns with saline and cleaning away charred flesh. Bandaging the patches of skin along the bone was tricky, but they managed. Dealing with the feathers was harder. Some were just lightly singed and Dean was able to wipe off the soot, leaving most of the vane intact. Others were completely blackened and curled, and Sam suggested they just pull those out.

"They can probably grow back," he'd said.

Dean had almost snipped back if Sam had seen that on Animal Planet or something, but didn't. He just wanted to get this done in case the morphine wore off quickly.

"Am I still in my vessel?" Cas suddenly asked.

Dean quirked a brow. "What? Of course you are."

Cas craned his neck back to look up at him. "Oh. I don't feel heavy enough."

"That's the morphine," Sam assured him. "You're not feeling any pain, right?"

Cas blinked sluggishly. "I…don't think so."

"Good, 'cause we're almost done," Dean said.

"I'm sorry I let you down again, Dean," Cas mumbled.

Dean's hands stilled. "What?"

"Ellen and Jo are dead," he said morosely. "Lucifer is still out there."

Sam crouched by Cas's head and put a hand on his shoulder. "I told you that wasn't your fault, Cas."

"But I wasn't there when you needed me." Cas turned glassy eyes up toward Dean again. "I wasn't there, like when you were trying to stop Lilith. I'm sorry, Dean."

Guilt squeezed at Dean's heart for the hurtful words and accusations he'd thrown at Cas—when they'd first gotten back from Carthage and at other times. There had been so much other stuff going on with Cas that Dean hadn't been aware of. He needed to stop making knee-jerk assumptions and jumping down the angel's throat.

"It's not your fault, Cas," he managed to get out without his voice cracking. "And I'm sorry I yelled at you like that. I was only angry because I was worried. We didn't know what had happened to you, if you'd been killed…" He swallowed hard as his gaze flicked over Cas's injuries. "I don't want to lose you."

Cas's eyelids fluttered again. "I don't want to leave," he murmured. "But I keep…floating…"

Dean sighed. Now wasn't the time to be having profound conversations, especially with a doped-up angel. "Yeah, well, you always manage to find your way back," he said quietly.

Sam met his gaze, some heavy emotion in his eyes that Dean didn't have the energy to decode at the moment. He was running out of steam, and they hadn't finished patching up Cas's wings yet.

So Dean threw his full attention back into it. Sam, thankfully, did the same, and didn't make a comment on anything from that exchange. By the time they were done, Cas had fallen unconscious again. Dean didn't go back outside for his bottle of whiskey.

* * *

Castiel woke to feeling heavier than ever before, and when he tried to move, he heard and felt the rustle of corporeal feathers. His eyes snapped open in terror before he remembered where he was and why. Fiery pain forked through his shoulders and wings, and he let out a ragged gasp under the assault.

"Easy, easy," Dean's voice came from somewhere above him. "Guess the morphine wore off."

Castiel grunted into the sofa's armrest. He never would have thought human drugs would have any affect on him, and the experience was not pleasant. Though it had distracted him from the agony in his wings for a brief time.

Stomach clenching, Castiel lifted his head and tried to crane a look over his shoulder. His wings were obviously still there, but he was terrified that they had been reduced to charred bones. What he found, however, was one obsidian wingspan with several patches of white gauze haphazardly plastered across it. Some feathers were missing, but they were not the skeletons Castiel had feared. He sagged back down on the sofa again.

"You want another dose?" Dean asked.

"No."

The Winchester huffed. "Alright."

Castiel attempted to sort through his muddled memories of the last time he was conscious, but it was all tinged in a strange fuzziness. He did realize that Sam and Dean had tended to his wings as best they could.

"Thank you, Dean," he said softly. "I- I wouldn't have been able to manage these injuries myself."

The hunter was silent for a beat. "Could you have died from these, untreated?"

Castiel frowned. "I don't believe so. But…they could have worsened, incapacitated me to the point I would be useless to you in this fight." He dropped his voice gravely. "More useless than I already am."

There was a shift in the air, and Castiel turned his head to find Dean taking a seat right next to him.

"You're not useless, Cas."

"At Carthage—"

Dean cut him off with an exasperated noise. "I'll let it slide you not paying attention the first time, seeing as how you were all doped up, but I already told you, Cas, that _wasn't_ your fault. I shouldn't have blown up at you. I was just…you scared me, you get that?"

Castiel quirked a perplexed brow, which seemed to make Dean sigh.

"You're like my best friend, Cas. Hell, other than Sam, you're like my only friend."

Castiel's frown deepened. Dean considered them…friends? But, Castiel was a soldier, a guardian for the Winchesters. He didn't have friends. Especially not since being cut off from the Host.

"I've lost too many people," Dean went on. "I don't want to lose you, too." He leaned forward and gave Castiel an earnest look. "So _don't_ go off on your own again, okay?"

Castiel blinked. "Okay."

Dean inhaled sharply. "And don't hide injuries from us. Or do crap that could get you killed," he added with a domineering glare.

Castiel only nodded mutely. He could…agree to the first. But the second he could not promise.

He flicked a quick glance over his shoulder at his burned wings. This was not the first time he had been scorched attempting to reach Dean Winchester. And with the looming Apocalypse and battles ahead, it might not be the last.

But Castiel would walk through fire for the Winchesters.

That's what you did for…friends, after all.


End file.
